lego

Several San Francisco Bay Area Target stores were the recent, uhhh, target of not one, but two unrelated barcode scammers who apparently found the manufactuer's suggested price of Lego sets too much to bear.

The two men allegedly replaced the bar codes on Lego boxes with phony bar codes, allowing them to waltz out of the store with hundreds of dollars worth of the building blocks for a fraction of the actual price.

And to add a touch of "you-can't-make-this-up" flair, one of the accused is a VP at software giant SAP. According to authorities, the … Read more

This year at the San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire, trying to juggle my own interests (talk to cool people) and my 5-year-old son's (build or break stuff), we both hit paydirt at the same time when we stumbled across the Grid Beam exhibit.

My kid spent 45 minutes in the hot sun inventing and screwing together a life-size car-like contraption, and I got to dive into the minutiae of the product with its creators, Phil and Richard Jergenson.

Grid Beam is Erector Set meets IKEA. The hardware is standard 2x2 wood beams with holes drilled through every 1 1/2 inches (which is the actual width of a 2x2 beam), and standard furniture bolts that will be familiar to anyone who's ever assembled a futon frame.… Read more

For Limor Fried, a hardware hacker and leader in the booming maker and do-it-yourself movements, there was never a question of waiting for someone else to jump in and do a better job of inspiring girls than Lego has done with its widely-panned Lego Friends set.

The product was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week last year and drew worldwide attention as the global toy company's first major attempt at showcasing girls in a new set. Still, many Lego fans were upset that the company had focused on well-worn stereotypes and had ignored the modern reality that girls can do pretty much anything they want, whether or not there's pink or purple involved.

For Fried, who runs open-source hardware developer Adafruit Industries, it sounded like it was time for a little culture hacking.

… Read more

If there are spelling mistakes in this post, it's because I am continually shaking my head as I write.

For I would like to relay the tale told by authorities on the subject of Thomas Langenbach.

They allege that Langenbach, a multi-millionaire VP at SAP Labs Integration and Certification Center attempted to certify certain bar codes without integrity.

He stands accused of creating his own bar codes, wafting along to Target, switching the bar codes on Lego items, and then buying them at drastically reduced prices.

I am indebted beyond price to NBC Bay Area for bringing me this … Read more

It's the tallest Lego tower ever, soaring to the heavens at more than 104 feet and setting a geek world record last week.

The Lego World Tower brought joy to the hearts of Koreans last week when it went up in Seoul's Olympic Stadium.

At 104 feet and 7 inches, it edged out a similar tower erected in France last year at 103 feet. It took some 4,000 Korean kids five days and half a million bricks to put it together. … Read more

I'm a full-grown adult, and I must confess that some of my favorite Xbox games have "Lego" in the title.

Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones -- these games may be aimed at kids, but they're funny, clever, and thoroughly entertaining for all ages.

Alas, although they're available for nearly every platform known to man, only one has made its way to iOS: Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4. It was great -- but it was also 18 months ago.

Finally, finally, there's more Lego goodness for iOS, even if it's just … Read more

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As a parent, there's nothing quite so satisfying as watching your kids express their creativity. Doesn't matter if it's with a set of blocks, a box of crayons, or an app that turns long sequences of still photos into superhero-themed movies -- it's just thrilling.

On Saturday, I gave my 9-year-old son a five-minute tutorial on using Lego Super Hero Movie Maker, a new app that lets Lego fans create nifty stop-motion animations using their own minifigs (i.e. little Lego people).

By Sunday, he'd already created several hilarious movies, the best of which involved a giant praying mantis catching and devouring several minifigs (hey, who says the good guys always get to win?). And he was just getting started -- Super Hero Movie Maker was an instant hit.… Read more

Some people send Lego men spaceward on rockets, while others can only dream. Or build giant Lego barrel organs dedicated to Star Wars.

To promote the 3D version of "The Phantom Menace," German ad agency Serviceplan Campaign turned heads and arms with this mammoth instrument created from more than 20,000 Lego bricks.

When it's rotated with a hand crank, the barrel's many trees, buildings, and other Lego structures trigger levers that strike keys on a keyboard. That, in turn, plays the series' main theme. … Read more